Name: Vladyslav and Vitalii Vlasiuk
Position: Twin private lawyers
Key Point: Pay full taxes, don’t violate intellectual property, help government
Vitalii Vlasiuk, 28, says he’s a man who practices what he preaches. He claims he’s never downloaded or streamed anything from pirate websites. This would violate intellectual property rights, his area of legal expertise.
“My conscience is clear,” says Vitalii, opening a wardrobe full of DVD discs in the office he shares with his twin brother, Vladyslav, in Kyiv. Here, in a small, messy room strewn with ties and jackets, they run a law firm called ePravo.
The brothers Vlasiuk are both men of law. Apart from graduating from Kyiv National University, Vladyslav studied in London’s Queen Mary University, while Vitalii got his doctorate in Kyiv.
However, the Vlasiuks are not just monetizing their knowledge: Alongside running a small seven-staff business with turnover around $200,000 a year, they’ve been serving the public pro bono.
Vladyslav, for example, was a co-author of the popular National Police reform bill. He rose through patrol police ranks to become chief of staff of the National Police, but quit in March 2016. He says he was “exhausted” by the pushback against change.
“I’m proud I’ve managed to bring many good people with right value,” Vladyslav says. “It’s a rare opportunity at such a young age.”
The brothers now have a running joke that Vladyslav has worked in two startups in his life – ePravo and the National Police of Ukraine.
In the meantime, Vitalii was working for Ukraine’s Justice Ministry, where, he says, he witnessed all the layers of bureaucracy and idleness of some of his former colleagues.
“Now I separate civil servants into two categories: those who work constantly, and those who don’t give a damn about their jobs. They just don’t give a damn,” Vitalii says, with disappointment. He says some ex-colleagues in the ministry would work on just one document and then watch TV the rest of the working day.
He goes quiet for a while.
“We rule our country – not Martians,” he says eventually. He says Ukrainians by nature tend to rely on other people, and expect the government to look after them.
“That’s the result of the failed experiment called the Soviet Union.”
Vitalii Vlasiuk says he doesn’t watch pirated movies, because it violates intellectual property rights. He always used to buy DVDs, which are now stored in a wardrobe in his office. Vlasiuk claims he embraced Netflix as it entered Ukraine in January 2016.
Having worked as civil servants, the twins say they realized that in order to bring about change, one has to start with oneself.
“The government does not work as it should, but people need to make the breakthrough. People need to change,” Vitalii says. “Deputies steal, but we elected them. The current state of Ukraine, our current authorities – it’s a mirror that reflects us.”
The twins’ work in the Justice Ministry and National Police is long over.
Now Vladyslav is in the process of setting up a nongovernmental organization called LEAD to provide legal assistance to officers.
“I share my opinions and give tips, and it seems authorities even listen to me,” Vladyslav jokes, adding that he and reformist lawmaker of the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko, Mustafa Nayyem, are aiming to build a public organization out of LEAD “to build a bridge between law enforcement and the public.”
His brother Vitalii, in turn, lectures at the National Prosecution Academy of Ukraine.
“We’d like to continue to work for the government in the future. For us this is more interesting than pure business,” says Vitalii.
While the Vlasiuks run their public initiatives separately, they share most other things: family, friends, a passion for jurisprudence and their ePravo business.
The brothers launched the company in 2012 to jump on the information technology bandwagon, despite their preference for criminal law.
According to the brothers, the Ukrainian tech business is more open to change and not as rigid as other sectors, such as agriculture. There, most of the big firms became the clients of established law firms long ago, and new market players don’t pop up as fast as they do in the IT industry.
The brothers compare the tech industry with a boiling cauldron, and other spheres to dead water. IT is now ubiquitous, and new law is being written for it all the time.
“IT penetrates everything,” Vladyslav says. “It’s interesting how it bonds seemingly absolutely different things and spheres.”
Most of the company’s time is spent with tech startups. The Vlasiuks help them to protect their intellectual property, set up corporate structures, choose the way they pay taxes and conduct money transactions.
But like any business in Ukraine, the brothers say, the IT business isn’t always honest: some use offshore companies to conduct money transactions, others register their employees as entrepreneurs, which gives them “a legal but illegitimate right” to pay 5 percent in taxes instead of 40 percent.
IT companies often blame the government for not supporting smaller business, but at the same time, they mostly register their employees as freelancers.
“That’s a loophole,” Vitalii said. “EPravo pays the whole 40 percent. Is it fair?”
Active supporters of a progressive tax system, the brothers think it’s vital in Ukraine for all firms registered in Ukraine, IT ones included, to pay taxes in full.
In spite of this position, however, the brothers consult on the use of offshores, advising some of their clients to move some of the processes or services overseas to ease money transactions or pay less in taxes.
“It is difficult to get the money out of Ukraine even if you’ve earned it honestly,” Vitalii says. “And not everyone wants to work with Ukraine directly, taking us for a third world country.”
But while the brothers have strong opinions about many business issues, they say a good lawyer should never tell a client what to do – only advise.
“Lawyers should clearly explain all possible options, and then let their client choose.”
